The Institutional Repository

Citation

Tedd, L.A. (2006), "The Institutional Repository", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 40 No. 3, pp. 300-302. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330610681402

In the preface to The Institutional Repository David Prosser, Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition in Europe (www.sparceurope.org/) refers to the words of Daniel Coit Gilman, the first President of Johns Hopkins University in the US who wrote, in 1878, that “it is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge, and to diffuse it not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures – but far and wide”. Gilman was referring to the concept of the University Press, but in 2006 the concept of the research output of a university community being made available to the worldwide community is being realised through the development of institutional repositories (IRs).

IRs have “appeared” on the agenda of very many libraries in universities throughout the world during the 2000s. A look at the Directory of Open Access Repositories, compiled by staff from the University of Nottingham in the UK and the University of Lund in Sweden, reveal that there are almost 400 libraries throughout the world beginning to be involved in this area – and therefore, many library and computing staff who will want to know more about IRs (www.opendoar.org/). This is also evidenced by papers on IRs appearing in many journals and conferences, so it is certainly a “hot topic” for the mid‐2000s.

The authors of The Institutional Repository were all based at Edinburgh University Library when writing this book and had much experience in setting up its IR – known as the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA – www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/). They had also been involved in a number of projects, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, including Theses Alive (the setting up of a repository of e‐theses in Edinburgh) and Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access (SHERPA). Thus, collectively, the authors had a wealth of experience, which has been used in good stead in the writing of this book.

As with any piece of writing, a major decision is deciding on the structure. The Institutional Repository comprises seven chapters. The first, “The institutional repository in the digital library” provides the context for an IR within the wider perspective of a digital library. Details are included, in tabular form, for example, of names and URLs of IRs in academic institutions (mainly from the UK and the US), subject‐based repositories, as well as details of a qualified Dublin core metadata record for an item in the ERA. Chapter 2 starts on the “nits and grits” and is entitled “Establishing a repository”. One subsection covers costing issues and concludes that, having identified the technical, metadata, liaison, preservation and management activity required to set up an IR this would necessitate 2.5 full‐time equivalent staff members – a significant additional cost. Technologies and technicalities is the topic of the third chapter with the key standards in this area of the open archives initiative for protocol for metadata harvesting and the similar sounding, but very separate, open archival information system being explained with the help of clear schematic diagrams. The Chapter 4 covers workflow and administration and examples are included, again through clear schematic diagrams, of possible processes involved in the workflow of the deposit of varying types of material in an IR. Chapter 5 starts with the statement that an empty IR is analogous to a library with empty bookshelves. A challenge facing many involved in developing IRs is how academic staff can be persuaded to deposit appropriate materials in the IR and so this chapter, entitled “Advocacy” outlines some practical strategies for this. No book on IRs would be complete without a chapter on the important area of intellectual property and this is the topic covered in Chapter 6. The authors recommend that academics writing papers for publication in scholarly journals should aim to retain some rights in their work so that copies can be deposited in their IR. Current details of rights available from various publishers are made available through by SHERPA Rights Metadata for Open Archiving (ROMEO) project (www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php). The final chapter is a case study on the development of the ERA and its evolution from the Theses Alive and SHERPA projects. There are six appendices, which give standardised information on some of the software available for IRs, including DSpace (the one used for the ERA). In addition, there is a glossary comprising a list of acronyms used (helpful as not all are spelled out at first mention) and definitions of terms and phrases, a bibliography and an index. One item in the bibliography (about the ROMEO project) gave details of the journal it was published in as well as the URL for the version in the authors' IR.

The publisher, Chandos, is to be congratulated on the speed of production. Some electronic items in the bibliography were checked at the end of September 2005 and I received the review copy in late January 2006. However, perhaps I should point out some minor points that could have been picked up by staff at the publisher's – the acronym JORUM (p. 13) is not explained anywhere, bindery is mis‐spelt as bindary on p. 97, the reference to Jones (2004) on p. 75 fails to indicate which of the six items written by Jones in 2004 in the bibliography is the appropriate one, and Lesk appears as Lest in the index.

The authors are also to be congratulated on bringing together, in a readable work, the fruits of their practical experiences with the ERA. I have used the ERA as an example of an IR in my teaching and will also refer students to this text for further details. To my knowledge at the time of writing (April 2006) this is the first print book on IRs to be written – Barton and Waters (2005) is a practical workbook covering similar ground from the learning about digital IRS programme but is only available in electronic form. I am sure that this work will prove to be of great assistance to those involved in developing IRs.